Caretakers

“Bestor-Siegal switches perspective among a group of characters with tenderness and intimacy. . . . The writing is smooth as honey. . . It's utterly absorbing.” — NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW “Thrilling and deeply moving, gorgeously written and intricately plotted . . . bold and brilliant." –ELIZABETH MCCRACKEN Recommended by New York Times Book Review • USA Today • Glamour • Business Insider • Popsugar • CrimeReads • The Millions • BookRiot • and more! Set in a wealthy Parisian suburb, an emotionally riveting debut told from the point of view of six women, and centered around a group of au pairs, one of whom is arrested after a sudden and suspicious tragedy strikes her host family—a dramatic exploration of identity, class, and caregiving from a profoundly talented new writer. Paris, 2015. A crowd gathers outside the Chauvet home in the affluent suburban community of Maisons-Larue, watching as the family’s American au pair is led away in handcuffs after the sudden death of her young charge. The grieving mother believes the caretaker is to blame, and the neighborhood is thrown into chaos, unsure who is at fault—the enigmatic, young foreigner or the mother herself, who has never seemed an active participant in the lives of her children. The truth lies with six women: Géraldine, a heartbroken French teacher struggling to support her vulnerable young students; Lou, an incompetent au pair who was recently fired by the family next door; Charlotte, a chilly socialite and reluctant mother; Nathalie, an isolated French teenager desperate for her mother’s attention; Holly, a socially anxious au pair yearning to belong in her adopted country; and finally, Alena, the one accused of the crime, who has gone to great lengths to avoid emotional connection, and now finds herself caught in the turbulent power dynamics of her host family’s household. Set during the weeks leading up to the event, The Caretakers is a poignant and suspenseful drama featuring complicated women. It’s a sensitive exploration of the weight of secrets, the pressures of country, community, and family—and miscommunications and misunderstandings that can have fatal consequences. “A deep, enthralling pleasure, as wise as it is lovely. I read it voraciously, desperate to discover the fates of its unforgettable characters . . . Magnificent.” – ROBIN WASSERMAN

A lush, disorienting novel, The Caretaker takes no prisoners as it explores the perils of devotion and the potentially lethal charisma of things Following the death of a renowned and eccentric collector—the author of Stuff, a seminal philosophical work on the art of accumulation—the fate of the privately endowed museum he cherished falls to a peripatetic stranger who had been his fervent admirer. In his new role as caretaker of The Society for the Preservation of the Legacy of Dr. Charles Morgan, this restive man, in service to an absent master, at last finds his calling. The peculiar institution over which he presides is dedicated to the annihilation of hierarchy: peerless antiquities commune happily with the ignored, the discarded, the undervalued and the valueless. What transpires as the caretaker assumes dominion over this reliquary of voiceless objects and over its visitors is told in a manner at once obsessive and matter-of-fact, and in language both cocooning and expansive. A wry and haunting tale, The Caretaker, like the interplanetary crystal that is one of the museum’s treasures, is rare, glistening, and of a compacted inwardness. Kafka or Shirley Jackson may come to mind, and The Caretaker may conjure up various genres—parables, ghost stories, locked-room mysteries—but Doon Arbus draws her phosphorescent water from no other writer’s well.

War, famine, disease; just a few of the many evils with which we share our world and daily lives but never aware that they exist as physical forms, escaped from the prison world of Exilia. The key to Exilia, lost since before recorded history, has now been found. The entrance to the prison world has been discovered, and the story told to the children by the last of the caretakers is just the beginning of what will become a quest of daring, confrontation, humour and spine tingling terror. The world has been waiting for millennia for the key to be found, for the long awaited moment to arrive when the defenders of good would be freed from their own imprisonment to continue their fight against the evils. But in order to so, Gabby and the brothers must first enter the world of Exilia and fulfil their quest. Guided by the map on the key they must travel through a world where time itself doesn’t exist, where the extraordinary is the ordinary, the unbelievable is the believable, and nightmares are a reality. The creatures of evil must be confronted, battled or avoided. A future of peace and tranquillity, or pain and suffering, will depend on either success or failure. But can their quest be fulfilled - can they succeed?

People with Borderline or Narcissistic Personality Disorders are master manipulators; Caretakers fall for them every time. This book helps Caretakers break the cycle and puts them on a new path of personal freedom, discovery, and self-awareness, through the use of real stories and practical suggestions from a seasoned therapist.

This volume presents the concept of vigilant care as a protective and non-intrusive parental attitude to risky behaviors of children and adolescents. The effective component in vigilant care is not control, but parental presence. Vigilant care is a flexible attitude in which parents shift between levels of open attention, focused attention, and protective action, according to the alarm signals they detect. The author presents a detailed theoretical, empirical, and clinical rationale for the model that deals with potentially problematic parental attitudes or parent-child processes such as overparenting, psychological control, disregard of legitimate personal domains or of the child's need for self-determination, parent-child mutual distancing, and escalation.

The Caretakers By: Jeannie Grace A devastating plane crash brings three teens together to form a deep, enduring friendship. The teens share a medical condition and a secret that will accompany them across time and space. Given the help of a very strange man and a talisman, they now have the ability to travel across time, witnessing acts of cruelty and kindness that have the power to change not only The Caretakers, themselves, but the future of the world!

When World War I ended, hundreds of British veterans stayed in France to work for the newly chartered Imperial War Graves Commission. Through the 1920s and 1930s, these veteran-gardeners married local women, raised bilingual children, and dedicated themselves to caring for the graves of their fallen comrades. When World War II swept through Europe in 1940, more than 200 War Graves gardeners were stranded in Nazi-occupied France. Their bosses explicitly ordered them to remain at their posts, even when their villages were under attack by the invading Germans. While some escaped, others were arrested by the Nazis. A handful managed to stay free and join the French Resistance. With their English-language skills and unshakable loyalty to the Allied cause, the gardeners and their families took on crucial roles in the effort to save British and American airmen shot down in France. In some cases, they hid the airmen in World War I cemeteries. In The Caretakers, internationally renowned cemetery expert Caitlin Galante DeAngelis tells the true story of three of these unlikely heroes: Ben Leech, a barman from Manchester who became a cemetery gardener in Beaumont-Hamel and joined the Resistance; Rosine Witton, the wife of a British gardener, who served as a key conductor on the famous Comet Line and survived Ravensbrück; and Robert Armstrong, an Irish gardener who worked for the Resistance until he was captured by the Nazis and sentenced to death. Through meticulous research, never-before-published journals and papers, and compassionate storytelling, DeAngelis honors the sacrifices made by War Graves gardeners and their families.

The essays collected together in Critics Not Caretakers argue that the study of religion must be rethought as an ordinary aspect of social, historical existence, a stance that makes the scholar of religion a critic of cultural and historical practices rather than a caretaker of religious tradition or a font of timeless wisdom and deep meaning. The book begins with several essays that outline the basis of an alternative, sociorhetorical approach to studying religion, before moving on to a series of discrete dispatches from the ongoing theory wars, each of which uses the work of such writers as Karen Armstrong, Walter Burkert, Benson Saler, and Jacob Neusner as a point of entry into wider theoretical issues of importance to the field’s future. The author then examines the socio-political role of this brand of critical scholarship—a role that differs dramatically from the type of sympathetic caretaking generally associated with scholars of religion who feel compelled to “go public.” Concluding the work is a consideration of how scholars as teachers can address issues of theory, method, and critical thinking in a variety of undergraduate classrooms—the location where they have always been publicly accountable intellectuals. The new edition of this still read and, for some, controversial book preserves the original essays but includes a new opening chapter and new introductory commentaries across all of the chapters to demonstrate how little the field has changed since the volume was first published in 2001. Accordingly, the book continues to provide a viable alternative for those wanting to take a more critical approach to the study of religion.

Father Jean came and stood next to Darby as he reclined and said, I will be returning to the abbey. I will pray for yer soul Darby and ask god what ye need to pay. It could be quite a substantial sum as ye have lived a very sinful life. Yes, yesI know, but it will be worth it to avoid the fiery flames. For the first time, and in a perplexed tone of voice, Christian spoke to Father Jean, You are not serious? Making Darby pay for forgiveness, a gift that is freely given. With a look of incredulity, Father Jean replied, Darbys sins are great and the cost of penance must equally fit his crimes. You heard him. The next time he meets the Death Angel he will be taken to Hell and left there. If he doesnt pay for his sins he has no hope of avoiding the fiery flames. Shaking in anger, Christian looked straight into the eyes of Darby OHerlihy and said, Do not listen to this fool, Darby! To be a Christian is to believe that Jesus Christ came to this world to offer His life as a ransom for those who would believe and entrust their lives to Him. His shed blood upon the cross is the payment for your sins. It is not something we as men pay for monetarily! If that be the case, then the poor and needy are doomed to die and to be carried to the fiery pit to burn there forever separated from a loving and caring God. It is written: For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, John 3:16 [KJV] that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life. In anger Father Jean responded, Where are these written Words you speak of and who has them? Are you the Caretaker of them? If you are produce them so that we can see them for ourselves.